GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 723 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 240 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon R9 M390X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 168320 (105%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is a little bit (more or less 19%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14848 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be quite a bit (more or less 152%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 M390X, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35136 (152%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.